- Weather
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Max |
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40°C |
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Min |
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30°C |
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Sunrise |
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05 : 30 AM |
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Sunset |
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06 : 54PM |
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Humidity |
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50 to 80 per cent |
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- Prayer Time
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Fajar |
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03:53 am |
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Dhuhr |
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12:13 pm |
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Asar |
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03:31 pm |
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Magrib |
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07:01 pm |
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Isha |
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08:23 pm |
- Oil Price
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- Gold Price
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Price in RO
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24ct / gm |
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17.46 |
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22ct / gm |
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17.05 |
- Currency Rates
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Forex Rates vs R01
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US Dollar |
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2.58 |
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Euro |
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1.94 |
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Pound |
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1.66 |
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Indian Rs. |
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N/A |
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Pak Rs. |
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256.18 |
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Bangla Taka |
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201.27 |
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Oscar-nominated films’ run at Oman multiplexes. Source: City Cinema
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Muscat: Oman residents were game to figuratively travel to Hollywood's Kodak Theatre for the 85th Academy Awards yesterday morning, but most of them refused to drive a few kilometres to catch an Oscar-winning film at a nearby multiplex.
A Good Day To Die Hard, the fifth part in the Bruce Willis action franchise, is currently running back-to-back to a full house per show at City Cinema multiplexes in Muscat Grand Mall, Shatti, Buraimi, Sohar, and Sur, while Steven Spielberg's American historical drama Lincoln, which won the Oscar award for Best Actor and Production Design, is banking on a lone show at City Cinema venues in Shatti and the Muscat Grand Mall.
Of the nine films nominated for Best Picture, six were released in Muscat before the Oscar awards were presented yesterday morning. "Out of these (six films), the American 3D adventure drama Life of Pi did extremely well, but Lincoln was a flop. We take out the movies anytime from regular screening if the performance is not good," confirmed P. Chandrasekhr, group general manager of Jawad Sultan Group of Companies that owns Oman Arab Cinema Company LLC.
Nominated for 11 Oscars, Ang Lee's emotional tale of a youngster stranded on a boat with a Royal Bengal Tiger in the middle of the Pacific Ocean ran for more than 14 weeks to packed houses in Oman. The film won four awards. "The fact that it was a special-effects-laden film made it necessary to watch Life of Pi in the theatre (and not at home)," Chandrasekhr added.
The other two films that have done well include Skyfall, the twenty-third James Bond film produced by Eon Productions, and Ben Affleck's Iranian hostage drama Argo. "These two films ran for eight weeks in multiplexes across the country," he noted.
However, films such as The Impossible, for which Naomi Watts received a Best Actress nomination, and Best Picture nominee Les Misérables, for which Anne Hathaway won the Best Supporting Actress award, did not perform well.
Similarly, Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow's film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, may have become a talking point all over the world—as much for Jessica Chastain's Best Actress-worthy performance as for the film's controversial torture scenes—but in Muscat, it can be categorised as an average film. "The movie world is all about money," remarked a Dubai-based film distributor who operates in Muscat. "Just because a film has won awards does not mean it will be a hit in Oman," he observed.
Another theatre-owner added that high-action movies do well because they are not dialogue-dependent. "Even non-English speakers enjoy action films, so we can be assured of ticket sales. This is not the case with more serious, drama-rich movies," he asserted. "Films need to have a big actor or star to click here."
So the box-office bottom line here reveals that Oman remains a Bollywood city, where only Hollywood films with a Bollywood flavour or those that attract family crowds find favour on the big screen. The rest are all consumed on the small screen, from DVDs to downloads on a personal computer.
A popular DVD lending library at Rex Road supports this view. "The DVDs of Argo and Flight (Best Actor nomination for Denzel Washington) and The Master (Best Actor nomination for Joaquin Phoenix) have been hired everyday. The demand has been growing since the Oscar nominations were announced," he said. "Whenever a film is nominated for an Oscar or it wins an Oscar, we witness a spurt in sales. Sometimes we have to buy more than two prints," confirmed another DVD lender in Ruwi.
But Chandrasekhr believes that times are changing fast. "Now, movies are released [in Oman] on the same date as they are released in Dubai, only a couple of days after their release in the United Kingdom/United States," he explained.
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